What is Martech? The Only Guide to Marketing Technology

Marketing Technology, commonly known as MarTech defines the software and tools that help marketers to carry out their marketing initiatives effectively. It also assists marketers to achieve marketing goals and objectives.

Marketing technology is used to plan, create, execute, analyze and measure the performance of both online and offline marketing activities. According to keyword research data from SEMRush, the average monthly search for the term “martech” worldwide has been increasing since 2020.

  • In 2020, the average monthly search volume was 9,000 searches
  • In 2021, the average monthly search volume was 10,000 searches
  • In 2022, the average monthly search volume was 11,000 searches

The increase in search volume YoY shows the growing popularity of Martech. The search volume has increased by 22% from 2020 to 2022.

Can you imagine running marketing campaigns without technology today?

It is difficult to justify the performance of any marketing campaigns today without any software or tools. So, there is no separation between marketing and technology. If you want to be successful with your marketing efforts, you need to have the right set of software and tools.

Types of Marketing Technology (MarTech) Tools

Marketing Technology can be divided into many categories. Any marketing related tools that adapt technology and assist organizations in offering top-notch customer experience and measure marketing performance are the ones often prioritized. Here are the main types of marketing technology that you should be aware of:

Analytical Tools

Analytical tools help businesses keep track of the performance of their marketing campaigns. The data gathered with analytical tools help companies to determine whether there are positive ROI from their marketing campaigns. The information that analytical tools provide can help marketers make changes that can easily amplify their ad campaigns and reach the target audience. In addition, using analytical tools can save time and money by reducing manual tasks and avoiding unnecessary errors.

These are some of the top analytical tools used:

Advertising Management Tools

Online ad technology helps companies to advertise their products and services effectively. Advertising management tools help businesses manage their digital ad campaigns that are published in various search and social media platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter etc. And this is where AdTech and MarTech actually converge.

These are some of the top advertising management tools:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools

CRM is one of the most overlooked marketing technology. CRM tools help businesses to build relationships with existing customers through communication and support. This allows businesses to provide better experiences for their customers and increase the lifetime value (LTV) of each customer. Most of the CRM tools in the market also include lead management as one of their modules with CRM itself that focuses on managing leads or prospects.

These are some of the top CRM tools:

Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing tools help businesses to create, launch and optimize email marketing campaigns. The automation process of sending email sequences for new customers, read-made templates for creating engaging email content, and management of customer’s email addresses and preferences are some of the top benefits of email marketing. These tools often come up with in-built analytical tools that help track open rates, and clickthrough rates (CTR) and conduct A/B testing.

These are some of the top Email Marketing tools:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools

Search Engines generate almost 93% of overall web traffic for a business website. SEO has become one of the top digital marketing channels for getting qualified leads. SEO tools help companies to perform various tasks including keyword research, competitor analysis, on-page optimization and link building.  With the right SEO tools, you can dominate the search result pages by ranking high for keywords and terms related to your business.

These are some of the popular SEO  tools:

Social Media Tools

Social media networks were the biggest game changer in digital marketing. Everyone is online today and it is essential for businesses to have their presence in these social media networks. However, managing social media accounts and creating ad campaigns on social media networks are complicated and time-consuming. With social media tools, you can stay connected with your followers and interact with them effectively.

These are some of the top Social Media tools:

Content Creation Tools

The way people consume content has rapidly changed over the years. And need to consistently create content for different platforms to stay engaged with their prospects and customers. Tools for creating graphics, videos, and audio are crucial for different stages of advertising and marketing. It is easier today for businesses to generate content with content creation tools supported by AI technology.

These are some of the top Content Creation tools:

Now that we’ve looked at the most common types of marketing technology, let’s take a look at the difference between MarTech and AdTech

Difference Between MarTech and AdTech

The difference between MarTech and AdTech is similar to the difference between marketing and advertising. The key difference is that AdTech is used to focus on influencing buyer behaviour through promotional campaigns, while MarTech is used to research, plan, execute, manage and analyze multichannel marketing campaigns.

To be more specific, AdTech is the term for tactics and ad management tools like ad exchanges, demand side platforms (DSPs) and supply side platforms (SSPs). It just works on managing and getting advertising campaigns out there to the right audience. On the other hand, MarTech is all about using marketing related technology and tools like SEO tools, CRM software, email marketing solutions and more. It covers a wide variety of technology solutions that marketers utilize to carry out effective and efficient marketing efforts.

Why Martech is Important in 2023?

Over the last 5 years, we can see that technology is playing a huge role in marketing.

Can you think of launching a marketing campaign and tracking the results today without the right marketing technology or tools?

The marketing landscape is evolving and becoming more sophisticated with the rapid growth of AI (Artificial Intelligence). In short, marketing technology is the key to success for any business in the future.

Marketing technology is also essential for marketers to scale their marketing efforts without having the need to spend time on manual tasks. This allows marketers to spend more time developing marketing strategies that attract and build relationships with prospects and customers.

For example, most companies implemented remote working culture due to COVID-19. Most martech solutions grew exponentially due to their capability to allow businesses to operate remotely and stay connected with their customers.

In one word, MarTech is designed to make marketing easier.

How Small Businesses Can Leverage on MarTech?

Small businesses are often concerned about their marketing investments due to the lack of budget, knowledge and expertise. These businesses also assume that they do not have sufficient time to learn something new when it comes to technology and digital tools.

The most common misconception is that new technology requires hours of training and learning.

Did you know that MarTech tools are primarily developed to increase productivity as the tools help simplify time-consuming marketing tasks?

Although we have to agree that it does take time to learn how to use some tools, the benefits often outweigh the time and investment.

This is how MarTech can help small businesses:

  • Competitive Advantage: Small businesses can easily outperform their competitors by leveraging marketing technology. When you have a tiny piece of technology that helps streamline your marketing processes, it can give you a competitive edge.
  • Improves Efficiency: MarTech tools can help in speeding up daily operations and workflows. The tasks that are handled personally by humans become much easier in the long run.
  • Valuable Customer Insights: With MarTech solutions it is relatively easy to gain valuable insights of your customers, prospects and visitors. This can help you analyze the criteria of your audience and develop targeted marketing campaigns that are appealing.
  • Cost Effective: Most MarTech solutions are affordable and offer good ROI for long term. These solutions can effectively save costs while improving your marketing efforts. Make more money by investing less.
  • Automate Marketing Process: You can free up time and focus on important tasks that require human intervention by using MarTech solutions that take care of social media posting, email marketing, and even content development.

Top MarTech Trends To Watch in 2023

Fresh trends continuously emerge every year and focus on how businesses are connecting with their audience and setting new benchmarks for marketing success.

In this section, we will explore the current and upcoming trends of MarTech that cover the impact and benefits it could bring to your organization.

Marketing Automation with AI and ML

AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have merged into the marketing technology landscape. The emergence of these technologies with marketing technology has made great improvements in terms of intelligence, productivity, efficiency and scalability. They enhance marketing automation tools’ ability to manage repetitive tasks effectively and allow marketers to have more time to focus on developing various marketing strategies.

Let’s take a closer look at the aspects of AI and ML that are making an impact to MarTech:

  • Generative AI: AI now helps in developing and curating content. For example, you can use ChatGPT to generate product titles, meta descriptions and blog post ideas. It also helps with drafting catchy social media posts. Although manual intervention is required at certain stages, this technology saves a significant amount of time and resources.
  • Customer Persona Generation: With AI, you can analyze data from multiple sources and create a detailed customer persona. It can easily segment customers into relevant groups depending on a variety of factors like demographics, geographics, web browsing behaviour, purchase behaviour, etc. This enables marketers to develop personalized marketing campaigns for each customer profile.
  • Predictive Analysis: Machine Learning can analyze millions of data identify the patterns and provide predictions on what to expect in the future. This will help marketers to understand customer behaviour and optimize their marketing strategies. For example, they can predict what is the next item the customers are most likely to purchase and actively promote them.
  • Marketing Campaign Optimization: Machine Learning algorithms can analyze the performance of your marketing campaign and make automatic adjustments to variables like ad placements, audience targeting and bidding. This automatic adjustment eliminates manual intervention and the campaign management can be on autopilot.

The Rise of Omnichannel Communication

Customers don’t have to rely on a single channel for communication today. They can interact with brands with various communication channels from websites, social media, email and even mobile apps. This new approach to customer engagement is called omnichannel communication.

So what is this omnichannel communication?

Omnichannel communication happens when a business or a brand offers a seamless customer experience no matter where the customers choose to interact. The customers will receive consistent and personalized experience throughout their entire journey from pre-sales to post-sales. It’s all about removing the silos of different communication channels and creating one unified, integrated approach for better customer engagement.

It’s not about the convenience of communication. The core element of omnichannel communication is personalization. When data from multiple communication channels are integrated, you will get a complete understanding of your customer behaviour, preferences and needs. This information will help you communicate your brand and keep them at the top of your customer’s mind.

The Impact of Cookieless Future

We know that most of you love cookies. But do you really like cookies with oatmeal or raisins?

People either love them or hate them.

The same goes for third-party cookies on the Internet.

The online marketing world can no longer rely on third-party cookies to track visitors to websites, offer personalized experiences or even measure the performance of campaigns. This shift of moving away from third-party cookies has become known as “cookieless future”

The main reason for the cookieless future is to advocate privacy-centric marketing. However, the main drawback for marketers is that they need to find new unique ways to engage with their audience. This will change how the data of customers is collected, how audiences are targeted and of course how the performance of marketing campaigns is measured.

There are a few ways to adapt:

  • Prioritize First-Party Data: Once the third-party cookies are not available, we need to have a solid first-party data strategy. The first-party data is the unique information that you collect from your own customers. First-party data-capturing mechanisms should be implemented in your websites or applications to ensure all the necessary data required for targeting and personalization are collected from people who have engaged with your brand.  You can collect first-party data with user registration forms, CRM systems, email marketing, surveys, etc.
  • Contextual Advertising: Placing ads based on relevant contexts is expected to make a comeback with cookieless future. For example, placing an ad for knives on a blog about cooking. Although the ads are not personalized, they still drive results while respecting the user’s privacy.  
  • Use Google Privacy Sandbox: The details of Google’s Privacy Sandbox are still being worked out. It is an initiative by Google to develop a set of standards to protect user privacy while delivering personalized ad experiences. Features like FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts] aim to segment users with similar interests and anonymize their identity while allowing effective targeting.  

To succeed in a privacy-driven future, marketers need to focus on collecting first-party data and carefully analyze them to identify new insights.

Data-Driven Marketing is The Future

The money is in the data today. That’s why we need data-driven marketing efforts to gain traction and increase revenue. Data-driven marketing has been making buzz in the MarTech landscape for years and it has become even more important in 2023.

Data-driven marketing is about utilizing the information from data to offer personalized experiences for customers, optimize marketing strategies and enhance decision-making within an organization. It primarily involves gathering and analyzing data from various touchpoints of a customer’s journey and using valuable insights to strengthen current and future marketing activities.  

Want to know why this trend is important?

Here’s why data-driven marketing is essential for MarTech:

  • Real-time Marketing Campaign Optimization: Businesses like yours can monitor the performance of marketing campaigns in real-time and make the necessary changes to improve the performance. This will help you create agile and efficient marketing campaigns.
  • Increase in ROI (Return On Investment): When your marketing campaigns deliver the right messages at the right time to the right audience, you’ll get the best results. This is when data-driven marketing ensures the worth of every penny invested in your marketing campaigns.
  • Personalized CX (Customer Experience): When you have the data of your prospects and customers, you know their preferences and behaviours. It makes it easier to craft personalized and targeted marketing campaigns to provide them with the best experience.

The success of data-driven marketing relies heavily on the right tools that can help brands to analyze and interpret data into valuable insights.  

The Challenges of Marketing Technology

Did you know that many marketers still need help and guidance from the IT specialist to understand the security, privacy, data storage and operational infrastructure of MarTech tools?

But when it comes to choosing the right marketing technology tools, marketers are the ideal ones to call the shots. Marketing technology is closely associated with digital marketing because the technology is commonly used to research, plan, execute, analyze and track digital marketing efforts.

Digital marketing takes skills and experience to master no matter what challenges you face with marketing technology.

So, what are the most common technology challenges that marketers are facing?

Let’s explore them together.

Over Investing in MarTech Tools

Most of the companies out there tend to invest a lot in tools without proper research. There are multiple tools required to perform specific tasks. However, without performing thorough research and analysis of the required tools, it can be nearly impossible to choose the ones that can help achieve your marketing goals.

Working with professionals with expertise in the MarTech tools can save you money while gaining a complete understanding of how those tools can help your marketing initiatives.

Lack of Knowledge and Expertise

Have you ever encountered marketing teams facing deficiencies in knowledge and expertise when you bring new technologies?

We have to agree that the learning curve for new tools can take longer time and it can be a hassle to force team members to speed up. In some organizations, the leaders tend to hire based on their knowledge and expertise in the technology they are using.

However, many analyst sites recommend hiring marketing generalists who can meet demands, rather than individuals who have particular expertise. With the rapidly changing marketing technology landscape, a particular technology can be irrelevant within a short period of time. Working with marketing tech experts can easily help to tailor the right MarTech stack and reduce the time taken to learn about new products.

Poor MarTech Stack Integration

What is the point of having a MarTech stack when they don’t complement and work along with each other?

Marketing technology integration can save time, money and resources by having teams maximize the utilization of their stack. According to recent studies, 26% of marketing budgets are spent on marketing technology. Moreover, organizations that bundle the right MarTech stack improve their speed of delivery by 78%.

Despite all these great benefits of choosing the right MarTech stack, it is easier said than done. Almost 50% of marketers have problems with integrating their marketing tools to stay productive and achieve their marketing goals. That’s why you need to choose a suite of products like Zoho One which comes with close to 40+ applications and caters for every single department within an organization.

Key Takeaways

MarTech or marketing technology refers to the tools used to research, plan, analyze, execute and track marketing efforts. It is essential for every single business to incorporate marketing technology and stay competitive in their industry. There are wide range of tools available in the market including email marketing tools, social media management tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, analytical tools, SEO tools and more.

Remember that marketing technology is just part of any marketing effort that can assist you in developing a winning marketing campaign. You still need to get the fundamentals of marketing right to achieve your marketing goals.

Did we miss out on something in this article? Please share your thoughts by commenting below.